Sharing a Room

My boys share a room. (It's not as nice as the room above, though I would love to do something like that for them someday.) They've shared a room since Liam was kicked out of our bedroom when he was about a year old. It was tough going at first. Liam wasn't the greatest sleeper. Okay, that's a little bit like saying that Godzilla wasn't exactly small. And there were trying times at first. My Mom always laughs as she imitates a 4 year old Xander who said, "Can't you get that kid to be quiet?" to her with his hand over his ears when she babysat one evening.

In our old house, there was no choice. We had three bedrooms and one of them was an office for my work-at-home husband. The kids adjusted to each other and even draw comfort from having a sibling close by.

So my boys think that they should always share a room.

Our current house has enough rooms for the boys to have their own rooms, plus for office space for each of the adults in our home.  Imagine our surprise when we told them that they could each have their own rooms and they protested! There was no way they were going to sleep apart. The world would end if they had separate rooms. What were we thinking?

So they share a room here too. Except that Xander is now old enough that his bedtime is changing. He's no longer tired as early as his little brother. We would like to institute different bedtimes and to give Xander a half hour to read at the end of the day.

So the question is before "the courts" again. We'll see what happens. For those of you who have navigated this split before or have suggestions to keep them together, but give Xander his growing privileges, please speak up.

The Quiet Place

Every so often, I spend some time on Pinterest. I like to browse through and see what catches my eye. It's kind of like window shopping. Lately, I've tried a few of the recipes that have popped up.

Today, thanks to my friend Erica, I found The Quiet Place Project.  Go ahead. Take a look. Follow the link. And then think about it.

I recently had my membership to an online mommy board deactivated. There have been questions about it, and although there was a defining moment that helped me to make the decision, the ultimate reason was this.

I'm not going to stop posting on Facebook. Or blogging. Certainly, I like my electronics. But every so often, we all need a break from it. I'm going to post, and then I am going to spend the last hour of my day without the electronic noise in my life.

Go...find your quiet place too.

And to the person or persons who created that site: Awesome!

People Do This On Purpose?

I have to say up front that I just don't get why people would do this to themselves on purpose.

I blogged over here about my sleep issues and the core of them being my medication for depression. It's been a few weeks, but I have had two changes in medication because of it all and have come off of the SSRIs as a result. Which leads to this post.

Coming off of SSRIs ends in withdrawal symptoms. I've heard that if you do it slowly enough, over months and months, that the withdrawal can be minor. Since the core of my issues revolve around sleep, I don't have months and months to do this. It's been weeks. Today I am a full week of being off of every drop of SSRI.

It's been a hard and long week. Frustrating. Full of tears some days. Other days I've felt like the cat rubbed the wrong way. Still other days, I feel great. While my husband knows and understands what I am going through, the kids are still small; one wouldn't understand and the other shouldn't be burdened with trying to understand. So my husband picks up the slack and smooths things over, while I try my very best to be on an even keel. The kids deserve it, so I am trying.

The worst of the moods seem to have passed. I hope. But there is one physical symptom that will take a while to taper off and it is the one symptom that irritates me the most. I've read descriptions of brain zaps as part of the withdrawal from these drugs, but what I get is more like vertigo in my peripheral vision. If I turn my head while I am walking, the world goes wonky. Turning my head can be side to side, but it can also mean up or down. Try walking and just looking straight ahead!

The only cure for it is to stay stationary at all times. Yeah, that works well for me too! So I have done things in small spurts and try to minimize how much I have to do. For now, I am not driving. When this recedes, and it will, I will drive again. For now, I refuse to put myself, my kids, and other people in danger because I need milk at the store. My husband goes when he can and I wait when he can't. (This takes patience for me, since I don't like waiting and am not used to being hobbled like this.)

Our backyard looks like the Clampetts live here and I desperately want to work on that too. So I get little bits done and hope that tomorrow and next week will be better. The moods I can handle, the inability to get things done just irks me.

And that is why I wonder why people would take drugs, knowing that this is the ending of it all. That withdrawal, both physical and mental, is imminent. I took these drugs because they helped keep me upright when the depression was so thick that I couldn't see my feet, let alone move them. I also wonder why we would even use prescriptions that do this to us in the long run? The side effects from these drugs are a whole other disease! Why aren't we searching out better options?  Understand that I am not saying that these drugs aren`t necessary and that we shouldn`t use them. When I was put on them, I needed them desperately. I know a lot of people who use them and need them badly. However, I wonder why the medical industry isn`t looking for better solutions. Perhaps they are and I just don`t know about it.

For now, I am doing what I can and hoping that each day will get a bit better and I won`t fall over in the process.

Wedding Gowns

Yesterday, I was obsessed with what to do with my wedding gown.

It's in the closet, in a bag, still yet to see a dry cleaner. Every so often, it nags at me from the closet and I wonder what to do with it.

I hear about women keeping their dresses for their daughters to wear, either for their own weddings or for playing in or for pictures while they grow. Having two sons makes this a non-issue. I'm fairly certain neither of my boys will want to wear my wedding gown.

I have no desire to trash my dress either. In fact, until I googled "what to do with your wedding dress" yesterday, I'd never even heard of this particular trend. I see the appeal, but it's just not me.

Today I took the dress out of its bag and looked at it. Still very pretty. Simple lines, detachable train, no great pile of beads and bows (as was the style at the time), and still very much within my taste. Perhaps, I will take to making my own tradition and wear it on my birthday, drinking champagne, as was suggested by someone I read yesterday. For now, it is going back in the closet.

So, what have you done with your dress? Do you hope that future generations will wear it? What if you don't have daughters?

*A little side note: the dress above is not my dress. I tried to find a photo of it online, but it's not available, since my wedding was in 1999. All the pictures are done in film, not digitally of our actual wedding, so I'd have to scan and right now I am in the middle of changing computers. It's a pretty one though. 

Failures of the Fairy

It's not actually the tooth fairy's fault, but she is the first to come under the scrutiny of my oldest son. He's unsure if she exists and will tell you one day for certain that she doesn't and the next day he comes up with an idea on how to prove it one way or another.

Truth be told, I am a little bit proud.

The big problem is that there is no consistent story about this little lady. Why does she take those teeth? (Ray has declared that she grinds them up to use as fairy dust.) And what should she bring? Money? Toys? Most parents seem to lean toward money, but then we are all over the place for the amount of money.

Today, I heard one that surprised me, apparently one of my son's buddies gets the money AND to keep the tooth!

No wonder the tooth fairy is under suspicion.

Summer is Coming

May just started, so I figured that I had plenty of time to consider our summer plans. Not that we haven't been talking about summer, mind you. We have friends coming to visit in July. I am going with the kids to visit a few people too. And we have already started a list of things to do. (Thank you Pinterest.) So, I do know that Summer is on its way.

What I didn't count on is how quickly summer will be here.

Today, at preschool, a few of us were talking about how soon the year is over. It turns out I only have two more duty days for preschool! That's a milestone. Liam only has 12 more days. That's a shocker. What is more shocking is that come a bright September morning, he will be off to real school. Double whammy: Ontario now has all day, every day Kindergarten and our school is starting that program this fall.

I am sitting in my office, with the sun coming in the tiny window, wondering what that will be like. What will a whole day of this kind of quiet bring? What am I doing next? Fall will bring many changes for our household.

Xander is currently doing what I think will be his last French show and tell for the year. Next week will be his last presentation. And he has long past his 100 books for the year. Amazing! I am very close to having a second grader in my house. When did that happen? He has 37 more school days.

Last fall seems like a long time ago. Winter felt like it took forever to wade through. Spring edged in and edged in and edged in, until we finally realized it really was here (I put our winter clothes away last week, so let's hope so!). But summer, I have a feeling that summer is just waiting around the next bend, ready to jump upon us all.

Leaves

For most of my adult life, I have made references to myself as fractured. I've lived all over Canada, plus time in Europe and Asia. It doesn't matter where I go, I have people and memories. Places left behind. I carry them with me always. I am just as much the little girl who played in mud puddles under rainy November skies on the northern tip of the Vancouver Island as I am the young woman who swam in a waterfall one summer in Newfoundland. Once, I was a teenager with clear blue skies above me and waves of wheat and flax around me.  Today, I am a mother, a writer, a friend, a runner in the suburbs of the most populous city in Canada.

I've made reference to this, all this time, as being fractured. Broken into pieces.

Sounds grim, doesn't it?

I see why I did that. I cannot choose one over another. I cannot deny that there is appeal to living in New Brunswick, where I once walked the ocean floors and cried at the beauty of the wild edges of this country. But choosing a life where that is my every day and my every breath means that the big skies of Saskatchewan that sustain my soul and the winds that rustle the prairie harvests and whisper to me through time and space are even further from my reach. I felt like I just could not have ALL of it.

Sometimes, I envy my friends who have lived in one place their whole lives and have parents, siblings, and extended relatives down the street or a few miles away. I can barely wrap my head around that concept.

Except today I woke up and realized that these pieces are not a fracturing of myself. I am not broken. I am a representation of all of the pieces that make up our country. I have tundra and rocky mountains in me. My feet have touched both oceans. I have literally flown over our country from one end to the other. I have experienced the hottest summer nights and the coldest winter days this land offers. These pieces are more like leaves. Sweet bits that make up the depth and breadth of the whole tree. Layers of story, experience, life.

In the Haze

I woke up this morning with the idea that I wanted to describe what the haze of living with sleep deprivation is like for me. If you've lived like this, then I would love to hear about your experience too.

At first, I thought about it in the same way I thought about fog: thicker and thinner in places, obscuring my view of what I normally know is around me. I knew that writing was there. I knew that running was there. And sometimes I attempted it anyway. A lot like driving when you know that the road is there, but can only see about 15 meters ahead of you.

I hate that kind of driving. Living that way isn't great either.

But that was what it was like in the beginning of my sleep deprivation. As time wore on, it was more of a haze in the mind. Haze takes over everything. It made thinking and planning harder. My concentration was gone. I lived in the moment, planning for not much more than I could see in front of me.

The effects of sleep deprivation have been compared to alcohol consumption, and the comparison is not pretty. If this is a concern for doctors who work long shifts, what does it do to ordinary people who are driving, cooking, and managing their lives? How does a person work?  I can tell you that it's not easy. As a freelancer, I've watched as my business falls to pieces around me, because I can't plan and pursuing clients is almost impossible.

In this haze ideas flit away very quickly. Words that were once easy to access are stuck in the hazy brain. As a writer, without words and ideas, I am not able to perform for my basic tasks. It would be like an accountant who can no longer remember how to add.

There have been days where I stood there, telling my kids to get ready for school and couldn't remember the word toothbrush. My sentences dying in my mouth. Not being able to access basic vocabulary is frustrating and scary.

It's not just an ineffective way to write, it's an ineffective way to live. This is haze. This is four years of sleep deprivation.

Returns and the Story of Sleep Issues

It's not just that I haven't been blogging. I've been avoiding blogging.

It seemed like life was full of crazed, but mundane life happenings. Sometimes funny in the moment. Sometimes sad. But nothing worth blogging about.

The big thing isn't that it wasn't worth blogging about, but that my drive and desire...my headspace to write in was gone. I've been elsewhere.

Yes, I have been dealing with growing boys. I have also been volunteering at both schools and with the Canadian Scouting movement. I do laundry. Sleep. Check email and facebook. Eat. The normal everyday things. But I haven't been writing, except in bits and spurts.

Here's the thing: I haven't had a decent night's sleep in about 4 years. If you've followed me for a while, you know that our littlest gave us all a hard time with sleep. He just didn't. Part of it was allergies and reflux, and part was conditioning. We managed to get over that with the help of a wonderful woman at The Sleep Doula group in Toronto.

I had PPD. It wasn't fun. And despite what has been suggested to me on occasion, it wasn't a choice I made or something I had time to indulge in. It made what was hard enough already, even harder, so I went on medication. The medications commonly used for PPD is from a group called SSRIs. If you are less than fluently medical (yeah, me too), SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors or Serotonin-Specific Reuptake Inhibitor. My doctor did explain how it works. And it did work. I was able to get through. It was like the difference between running in snow up to your knees or running on a calm, balmy day.  I went off them for a short while, I took them again. I've been on them for most of 4 years.

It seemed to be the solution. But still, I was not rested. Ever. I slept. Oh boy, did I ever sleep. At the drop of the hat. And I had vivid dreams. Wildly vivid to the point where I carried them with me through my waking day. But I was never rested.

In February, I went to a sleep clinic and the results eventually came back: I dream. Sounds funny, right? Everyone dreams. Except that I dream from the moment my head hits the pillow until the moment I get up.  This doesn't sound like a problem, except when you consider that when you are in REM all the time, you don't get any of the deep, restorative sleep.

Think about that: I've not had deep, restorative sleep for 4 years.

Yeah.

So, in that time I have given up bits of me, because they had sunk under the haze. The big two were running and writing. It was a bit at a time. Here and there. Until it finally dribbled away. I just couldn't manage the haze and to run and write. The running requires your body to be restored later and the writing requires clear thinking. I had neither.

I mentioned the PPD and the drugs, because my doctor thinks they are the key to my sleep problems. (The cure is sometimes another disease!) Sometimes this side-effect manifests as chronic nightmares. Mine weren't that at all, thankfully. On the other hand, had they been nightmares, this would have been solved sooner. I've changed the meds now, with the hope of some relief. There may be another change required in the future too.

And I am sharing all of this, because we are all far too quiet about depression. And even quieter about the drugs to treat them. So I am sharing. This is what has happened to me. I miss running and I miss writing. I struggle right now, so stay with me a while. I'm working on sorting this out. And I am hoping that there will be restorative sleep in my future.

The good news is that I no longer remember all of these vivid dreams. It's hope and I will take it.

The Difference Good Teaching Makes

We swim. My Mom learned to swim just off the St Laurence at a place called "The Yacht Club". Sounds swanky, but it was the 1950s and everyone just swam there. My Dad learned in the pond on the back of my grandparents' property. I managed to be one badge shy of being able to go for my lifeguard certification. Ray swims.

Xander has been in swimming lessons since he was three (we did one round of the tots and parents and that was one round too many for me!). He swims. But last term's lessons ended with him being terrified of the deep end, insisting he could no longer swim, and a fight for every lesson just to get him to the pool. And I found out why: the instructor was not encouraging. He told my child that he wasn't a good swimmer and that he couldn't do it. And then he would tell him that he had to tread water for 10 minutes! It was quite the contradiction. I was mad and upset, so I told the head guard about it and pulled Xander out 3 lessons early.

Luckily I have a few contacts at the pool and I was determined to not let Xander stew in his misery and misconceptions. He *can* swim. He swam better than last term when he was 4 and 5! So I made sure he had a good teacher this time.

...and then I bribed him to get him in the pool. (15 minutes on his DS if he went in and worked hard, another 5 if he jumped into the water)

This is Xander swimming across the pool (he's the tiny head in the water) the second week of classes:


And this is him preparing to dive into the very deep end of the pool two weeks ago.
What's the difference? The young lady who is his teacher never tells him he can't do something. She tells him he's doing a good job, says things like "way to go!" and couches any extra instruction with "next time we will add/try..."

Xander would literally try to walk on the water for her!

We have been lucky that both of out boys have always had a daycare provider, preschool teachers, babysitters, family, and swim instructors who have been like this. And I fully admit, I didn't appreciate it nearly as much until it was gone. Now, I am appreciating it even more!

Before...

Sometimes conversations come up about what I did before I had my kids. Last night, Ray and I were chatting with a friend who is in her mid-twenties and she asked how old I was when I had my kids.

I was in my 30s when I had both of my boys. Ray and I had been married 6 years. We'd been dating for 5 before we got married.

That's a long time to be together before children. Most people don't do that on purpose, but we did. A good chunk of that time was because we were still going to university. Once we were married, we also had job losses and gains and wanted to buy a house first. So we did.

Still, that leaves a lot of living to do before the kids came along.

I went to South Korea for about a year to teach English. It was a fun time, but also lonely and hard at times. I learned I could entertain myself, be alone, see and do things by myself, and be happy. I also learned it was more fun with someone. Ray and I had been dating for a bit less than 2 years when I left, he visited over Christmas, and then I came back to Canada and we continued our relationship.

We did a little traveling in Canada. It would have been more and further, but we also struggled financially at the time.

We bought our first car, got our first apartment together, had a roommate...and then didn't. We worked, lost jobs, and got jobs. Ray went back to school for a year.

I learned to run long distances and completed my first half marathon before my first child came. I also learned to knit (ironically, not for baby stuff, but to keep myself out of the fridge at night). I read a lot of books.

We ate out. We ate all kinds of different foods, and once even had a round of impulse eating (kind of like impulse shopping) with a friend at a fabulous Thai restaurant in St. Catherine's, Ontario. We experimented with cooking.

We went to GenCon in Milwaukee and then in Indy. We won second prize in the D&D Open Tournament. (I didn't play at all before I came back from Korea.) And we had fun. We met more people.

We made new friends and spent time with old friends.

We laughed. We laughed a lot!

We lived.

Do I regret having my children a bit later? Not a sniff. Do I miss those times? A bit, to be honest. But less every day. Best of all, I know we will have things to do and places to go when our kids are grown and doing their own things.

Is it much different now that we have the boys? This is where the irony lies: not very much. We do all of these things with the kids. We've traveled with them, gone to GenCon, see our friends, read, eat out and experiment with food, bought another house...you get the picture. It's our life together and we've introducing our boys to all of it a step at a time. It was harder when they were smaller, but as they no longer need booster chairs and diapers and playpens, it gets easier and easier. When they get older and have their own lives, I will miss having them with us, but I know that we will adjust again.

Ghostbusters, Curious George, and Toopy and Binou

What do these shows have in common? They all keep Liam vastly amused while I shower, clean, spend time on the internet, or write.

Go figure.

BTW, I had to look up how to spell Toopy, and I have just recently discovered that Toopy and Binou is incredibly funny to a 3 year old.

Xander, on the other hand, is not amused by Curious George anymore. I get rolled eyes and "Can't we watch something else, Mom?"

Good thing Liam is feeling better and the two of them are now playing with the Lego again. I think I need a break from the television sounds too.

Time are a changin'

It seems that times have changed and I rarely come to post on my blog anymore. It's been months and months, actually. Well, things have changed in our family.

We moved back in August. Our new house is only a short distance north of the old house, but it is in a slightly younger neighbourhood (the houses are 30 years old instead of 60-70 years old), the lots are smaller, and the houses are much bigger.

I am sure I will always love that little house that was our first real home. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if it was my first real home ever. Certainly I lived there the longest at almost 8 years. Plus, Xander was literally born in that house. Though the decision to move was a good one, there were many tearful moments for all of us when we left!

The new house is 1800 sq ft, not including the basement (our old one didn't hit 1100 sq ft with the basement, for the record), so we have plenty of room to grow. We also have offices for each of us and bedrooms for each of the boys, when they decide they are ready to live apart. For now, they share, because the mere mention of splitting caused much chaos and drama. I think it is kind of sweet that they want to be together.

A new house also means a new school. And Liam started preschool this year, so it's new schools all around. Both boys are enjoying their schools and Xander is especially tickled. He loves going to French Immersion and he is happier going all day, every day. In fact, the majority of his anxiety issues from last year have disappeared! Liam is pretty easy going, so he loves going to school.

Liam is almost caught up with his speech. We are very excited about this! It's nice to know what is going on in his world and have him interact that much more. In fact, there have been times when we have had to say, "Liam, you need to be quiet now!" Last week we got the gold seal of approval from the speech therapy people, who say he is ready for Junior Kindergarten in the fall. He still has to go to speech therapy to smooth out a few things, but they are pleased with his progress and know he will manage fine.

Which brings me to this week: I get to register Liam for Kindergarten!

Time flies.

I've not been working since the move. Mostly because who has time to unpack, settle in, volunteer at preschool, be a Beaver leader (yes, I volunteered to be part of the team that does our local Beaver group activities...and it's turned out to be a blast), and work too. I am working on settling that up though. I've been looking for work and have a few good leads. Plus, I am excited to get back to work again!

All in all, it has been a busy, but good time in our lives. Hopefully, I will remember to pop in here and post a big more often, now that writing is back on my radar.

Baby Mine

This is the song that I sang over and over to Liam when he was an infant. He cried so much, and this seemed to help. More than that though, if we were in the car and he began to cry, little Xander, who was only 3, would start to sing it too.

Funny, I never thought I would miss those days.

Now I am posting this and the song is playing in the background and both boys are beside me, singing it softly.

How Much is an Inch?

These days an inch means pants that are suddenly too short or finally just long enough. Pajamas that are too small. Shirts that don't quite fall over the waist.

There are a lot of short clothes on my boys these days. Both of them! I suddenly need to clear out old clothing and get out the next size for Liam and shop a bit too. They need new shoes. Pants. Pajamas.

So the other night, I was curious and measured them both. Liam is up an inch since the end of February. I knew I could almost watch him grow! Xander has finally reached 47", as he has been threatening since about Christmas time.

And I swear I am not putting miracle grow into their food.

The First Beautiful Day of Spring

It always happens around this time of year: that first beautiful day of spring!

It's a day of renewal. Spring breezes and warm weather, coupled with clear blue skies, have that affect. The first few warm spring days have arrived here. Grass is growing, little buds are peeking through, and I can see that the rhubarb is just pushing up.

And my heart is so happy to see these things. My skin is soaking in the sun and the gentler winds (although, today they are anything but gentle).

However, the very first beautiful day of spring makes me think about Carole's. Carol had had lymphoma years before and she'd had radiation therapy to get rid of it. In a very small percentage of cases, years later that radiation can cause leukemia. Carole won that lottery. Fortunately, Carole was a fighter. And she fought through this illness too. She lost all of her gorgeous, thick dark hair, spent hours getting chemo, and days in the hospital.

We were friends from a very close-knit group at work. And we all went in small groups, sometimes 2, and occasionally just a single person. We watched her struggle, brought her warm blankets, small trinkets, and news from the outside world. We were there. We celebrated when she was told she was in remission.

And then the worst happened: somehow as Carole was getting better and feeling stronger...as she was standing in her bathroom and looking in the mirror and willing her hair to grow back in...she got the chicken pox.

It doesn't sound like a big deal, the chicken pox. And it generally isn't, except when your immune system has been destroyed. Carole had no immune system. It wasn't long before she was incredibly sick and in the hospital. We barely had time to get our heads around that news and the medical professionals deemed it necessary for Carole to be placed in a coma.

She died on the first, beautiful day of spring.

So, forgive me if I am examining the tulips and crying at the same time.

The Great Spider Incident of 2011

Xander has a spider that his Grandpa (aka my Dad) gave him. It's a bit, hairy tarantula, to be exact. And the thing is dead and encased in a plastic bubble. It's going nowhere. Xander adores this thing and calls it Fred. (No, I am not joking.)

While I am not particularly enamoured with Fred, I also have no fear of him either.

My Mom (aka Nanny), on the other hand, is petrified of spiders. Why my Dad gave this doubious gift to my 5 year old, I will never understand.

Fred came to live with us in November and we hid him under a tissue while Nanny was here visiting. I thought that perhaps with Nanny arriving again tonight, we ought to put Fred away and insisted that he go into Xander's sock and underwear drawer.

This should be the end of the story, but my young son is one who stews and frets. So we put the boys to bed last night and Liam was out in about 30 seconds. Xander, on the other hand, came downstairs for snacks (got nothing, as he ate plenty at dinner) and to talk. Once he'd been run back to bed for the third time, he was heard singing and complaining loudly from his bed.

Ray went up to coax him into going to sleep. I hear words like, "Well, being quiet is the first step to going to sleep." were part of that conversation. Eventually Ray gave up and told me that there was something weird going on with Xander, who claimed he couldn't sleep.

I finished what I was doing, and then went upstairs to find that Xander had shoved all of his blankets and his pillow to the bottom of the bed and was lying on his sheet looking at the ceiling miserably. I did what I knew was the right thing: I climbed in.

Climbing into Xander's bed is no easy feat. He has a loft bed from Ikea. Getting in is not horrid, but getting out is a gymnastic accomplishment when you are in your 30s and the ceiling is sloped.

Xander was ticked off. He rolled as far away from me as possible and refused to share the pillow and blanket. I snuggled in and spoke to him a bit at a time.
What was wrong? Nothing. Was he upset? No.
I was quiet a moment.
Then we talked about the day. He liked playing with Play Doh today. The movie yesterday was good. And I asked him if he was really hungry and he started to get silly and tell me about making giant mounds of sushi (kid does love his sushi!).
After the giggles, we talked about how sometimes trying to sleep and not being able to sleep makes a person anxious about sleeping, which also makes it hard to sleep. Vicious circle.
And I prodded to see what was making him upset: was it school? Nope. Nanny and Grandpa's visit?

Paydirt!

Sobbing ensued. He was very happy for Nanny and Grandpa to come, but why oh WHY did Fred have to go away? He missed Fred. Fred was a friend. Please bring Fred back.

For the record, Fred spent the night IN Xander's bed. (Which made my Mom shudder when I told her the story.) And he will be on Xander's bookcase for the duration of the visit. His reasoning was that there was no way Nanny could get in there to see Fred. It's hard to argue, since the space is so tight between the end of his bed and the bookcase that I can't get in there either.

Most of the time we stand firm, but when something causes this much anxiety, it is sometimes better to negotiate and have peace and sleep.

Blogging, Coaching and Friends

My friend Trina is an archer. She lives and breathes archery, and has become incredibly involved in both the sport and coaching her sport over the past number of years. I keep teasing her that I don't understand how she can keep up with all of it and work a full-time job and raise a child. She really is a phenomenal person.

But she works hard for it all.

This year, she is involved in the Canada Games, but has put a little spin on it. She's blogging about the experience for the Coaching Association of Canada.

So, if you have a few minutes, check her out and lend your support.

The Fat Conspiracy

I've been thinking about fat lately. More like thinking about being fat. Pregnancy, small children, lack of energy, and a few running injuries have sidelined my usual healthy lifestyle. Not that I can remember ever being skinny, mind you, but lately I have been much heavier than I usually am and way over my own comfort zone.

I've done things about it. I joined Weight Watchers just before Christmas (and yes, I said before) and have been trying to go to the gym. I'm getting better. For me. It's a bit at a time, but that is perfect. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was my jeans size.

As a little aside, I do love the new Weight Watchers program. It's brought me so soundly back in line with eating habits that I love and do my body good! I feel great. I am not hungry (who can be with all of that food!) and I am losing weight. It's all good.

However, one thing that makes me think is the meetings. I go for the accountability, truth be told, rather than for the tips or the inspiration. I find that a lot of the time, the focus of the meetings (or is it the group itself?) is on how you can find snacks for only a few points.

It's not a focus on healthy eating.

The last few programs made it so that I could eat a load of junk, if I desired, and stay on program. This one rewards healthy living. And still, we are talking about 2 or 3 point snacks. Why? Why? If I eat like that, I can't manage to eat enough points. If I don't eat enough, I don't lose weight.

I've been pondering this a lot lately. And I think it has to do with fat. Or being fat. And our cultural understandings or misunderstandings about being fat. The big assumption is that fat = overeating, eating the wrong stuff, and just being lazy. So, encouraging weight loss means encouraging eating small amounts and being rigourous about diet and exercise in general.

No where in there do we talk about enjoying your life. Enjoying the food you eat and the exercise you do.

Revolutionary idea, isn't it? Enjoying it.

When I think about the times I am not exercising and I am not eating well, by and large, I am not really enjoying myself. I might be going with the flow. I am often overburdened with work and childcare and life in general when it happens. I am definitely not enjoying myself. Often I feel awful from my poorer food choices.

Somehow, I cannot get it out of my mind that we are approaching weight loss all wrong. That our perceptions of what makes us fat and what keeps us fat are all wrong. And that we are collectively doing damage to ourselves and even our culture over this. We've developed a deep-seated conspiracy amongst ourselves over fat: being fat, gaining fat, and losing fat. And it is a mighty slippery slope.

Sleepiness

We went to see the grandparents a few weeks ago. It was a late night for us all, and the kids didn't nap on the way down there. We had two tired little guys on our hands.

This was Liam, straight out of the car:

Ray managed to get Xander out of his boots and coat, only to have him flop on the kitchen floor with his favourite blanket.

I couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures just before we swooped them up and took them to their beds.